Hurling himself into the role of pop pedagogue, Jack Black is hilariousa fount of inane jive, absurd bluster, and banshee shrieks. Piloted by Black's endearingly obnoxious true believer, School of Rock navigates between the sentimental Scylla of Dead Poets Society and the cloying Charybdis of The Bad News Bears. Richard Linklater's most commercial movie is also his funniest. HOBERMAN

Still wistfully strumming amid fields of Western windmills, Grandaddy's Jason Lytle continues on the new Sumday to explore the slippery-slope simpatico of humans and machinescommiserating with a CPU "on standby" and throwing in with "futureless" El Caminos. Melodic Welsh myth-twisters Super Furry Animals' Phantom Power conjures the Birds while engaging tricksily with world politics. Lo-fi indie rockers Home open. SINAGRA

Today and Saturday at 8, Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Place, 212.777.6800

'HONORING WES MONTGOMERY'

The fastest thumb in the land and the inventor or at least popularizer of guitar octaves, Montgomery was a marvel of the '60s, an ingenious original who secured a huge following by playing only the most superficial aspects of his style. Peter Bernstein is in the hot seat for this tribute, with an ace quintet that includes saxophonist Gary Bartz and pianist Larry Willis. GIDDINS

Through Sunday at 7:30 and 9:30, Friday and Saturday also at 11:30, Jazz Standard, 116 East 27th Street, 212.576.2232

R.E.M.

The beauty of R.E.M. has always involved this intense yet amorphous nostalgia. After more than two decades of rule as rock-kind's most consistently innovative great band (or vice versa), that nostalgia is suddenly earned, emblematized by a hits compilation (In Time) and their first arena tour in almost 10 years. Can we still love them if their past is longer than their future? Friday with Pete Yorn, Saturday with Sparklehorse. KAMENETZ

It's trite to call rappers bards anymore, but Aesop Rock is one of the few who genuinely live up to the designation. Though his rhymes are super-dense, they're far from cluttered. Instead, he's a supremely elegant deployer of words who understands that gaps aren't necessary if the feelings are that potent. Def Jux label boss El-P knows a little something about hurt, too. Also: S.A Smash, P.F.A.C., Hanger 18. CARAMANICA

At 9, Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey Street,

212.533.2111

SUNDAY

OCTOBER 5

Theater

'ROUNDING THIRD'

Two Little League coaches with conflicting agendas square off in Richard Dresser's new dark comedy, directed by John Rando, who may be assumed, after Urinetown, to know something about the genre. Since NYC already has one dark comedy about baseball, Take Me Out, the question of whether this one cleans up or strikes out may rest in the hands of Rando and his actors, Matthew Arkin and Robert Clohessy. We'll see if the critics play ball. FEINGOLD

Kiss off Leni Riefenstahl with this brilliant Swedish documentary essay. Peter Cohen uses all manner of archival material to evoke the totality of Nazi notions of artistic, medical, and racial "deformity." As an argument, the movie is lucid and shockingexplaining the gas chambers of Auschwitz as the culmination of a campaign to "beautify" the world. HOBERMAN

At 8, Barbès, 376 9th Street, at Sixth Avenue, Brooklyn, 718.965.9177

Theater

'BECKETT/ALBEE'

Marian Seldes and Brian Murray are the secret ingredients justifying this curious quadruple bill: Seldes renders the haunted heroine of Beckett's Footfalls and the disembodied lips of his fiendishly difficult Not I; Murray contends with the jagged Beckettian syntax of A Piece of Monologue. Then they join forces for Albee's terse takedown of wedded bliss, Counting the Ways, while audiences count the facets of the actors' shared skill and magnetism. FEINGOLD

In previews, opens October 9, Century Center, 111 East 15th Street, 212.239.6200

TUESDAY

OCTOBER 7

Books

SUSANNA MOORE

Moore's gruesome In the Cut was a jolting departure from her three previous novels. And now for something completely different, on the eve of Jane Campion's film version of Cut: One Last Look, set in 19th-century India. PARK

At 6, Corner Bookstore, 1313 Madison Avenue, 212.831.3554

BARBARA NOVAK

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow," wrote Margaret Fuller (1810-1850), one of two women in the Transcendental Club. In art historian Novak's novel The Margaret-Ghost, a professor digs into Fuller's full, short life, and finds herself as haunted as Henry James himself was. PARK